And Yet I Scream
by Inkcharm
Summary: Kei faces the possible fate of being trapped for eternity with no hope of escape. - 3/6 chapters. Angst, dark, self-mutilation, insanity.
1. Prologue

**Title:** And Yet I Scream  
**Author: **Inkcharm  
**Summary:** No one will be able to hear me. And yet I scream...  
**Warnings:** dark, angst, self-mutilation  
**Disclaimer:** The movie "Moon Child" does not belong to me, nor do its characters or anything related to it. I make no profit out of this story, it is written merely for fun and entertainment of other fans.  
**Part:** 1/6

* * *

**And Yet I Scream**

_Prologue_

~*~

I am floating.

Life and death, mortality and monstrosity are far behind me now. I can still feel them on my skin, like droplets of water that have yet to dry. It is not an entirely unpleasant sensation, knowing that these words are losing more importance which each fleeting moment. Time has lost its meaning as well. Who would be able to measure time right here, where eternity is now, yesterday kisses tomorrow and seconds never pass. There are no shapes here, no sounds, no colours, no taste. I do not know where I am and I do not care. I am nowhere in particular and yet everywhere at once.

It is of no consequence who I was. It does not matter who I may become. I just am, and that is enough.

I can stay here and lose myself in the strange nothingness. Thoughts drip from the confinements of my mind, wrapping around me like silk, soft and without demand. I can pick them up whenever I feel like it; they will not be lost. This way of existence knows no bounds, no limitations. Physical restrictions are gone and they have left no trace behind, as though they have never existed in the first place.

The entity that is me has no questions to ask, because the answers are already there. There will be no judgement. This is neither heaven nor hell. I do not live. I have not died. I do not care. I am beyond caring. I just am.

I have no memory. I have no hopes, no dreams or desires or urges. I only float, everywhere and nowhere at once. I do not go anywhere, nor have I left anything behind. I am limitless and I am centered and I am forgetting how to feel. It is good. This place, that is no place because it does not exist, does not know emotion, and I am becoming one with it.

I am.

And yet...

Something tugs. Something moves inside of me where nothing should be moving for I do not have a body. And since I do not have a body, I can not feel my broken spine slowly mending itself.

I can not.

And yet...

I am...

…

… Kei.

I am Kei.

And yet...

Slowly, I open my eyes. Darkness surrounds me, but I can see through it as one would see through... the thought leaves me and I nearly sob. I can not die, but somehow I feel that I have lost the one opportunity of passing on that I ever had. Broken bones set, severed nerves reconnect. I take a breath and let the memories and the feelings and the scent and the physical limitations catch up with me again. But with them comes the pain, horrible pain and terrifying realization as I remember what has happened and where I am.

It is like a tomb, far beneath the earth, several tons of stone enclosing me in a tiny space that leaves not enough room to stretch out or raise my head. I am caged, buried not alive but not dead either, and I have eternity stretching ahead of me with mocking laughter.

No one will be able to hear me. I know that. There is no one here but me.

And yet I scream...

~*~

* * *

_TBC..._


	2. Chapter 01: Please

**Title:** And Yet I Scream  
**Author: **Inkcharm  
**Summary:** No one will be able to hear me. And yet I scream...  
**Warnings:** dark, angst, self-mutilation  
**Disclaimer:** The movie "Moon Child" does not belong to me, nor do its characters or anything related to it. I make no profit out of this story, it is written merely for fun and entertainment of other fans.  
**Part:** 2/6

* * *

**And Yet I Scream**

_Chapter 01: Please_

~*~

The scream bounces off the rocks, tears through darkest silence and slips through tiny cracks. Finally it disappears somewhere far away and leaves me alone once more. The rational part of my mind is fully aware of the fact that screaming is not going to help. It is a poor reaction to my current situation.

I lick my lips, trying to stall time. That is right, I am trying to fool myself, trying to push the thoughts about my situation further from my mind. An attempt made even worse by the fact that I am fully aware of this.

No.

Stop.

Do not go there. Do not think about it.

There. All good.

So I close my eyes and concentrate on feeling my tongue travel across my lips.

They are dry and cracked. A faint layer of dust and dirt has settled on them. I am probably filthy all over. I run my tongue over my lips a second time, to clean and to wet them and to distract. There's a faint trace of blood. I must have split my lip earler when...

A third time, then.

I believe I have already run out of ideas.

Think, Kei. Not about that, but about anything else. Please.

Everything is going to be fine.

Ever so slowly, I flex my fingers. All good there. My bones have stopped shifting and resetting, it seems, but the pain still lingers. I wonder how long I was out. It must have taken my wounds quite some time to heal, seeing as I have not fed in a week. Speaking of which, I think my hunger will likely be a problem in the very near future.

Not a good train of thought, either.

Thinking about ways to keep myself from thinking about my situation once more. I wonder why I am doing this. It would be better to think about my situation, to make plans for escape, to face reality and just get on with it. Where is my usual bravado? Where is the mocking smirk I show towards the rest of the world? Then again, why bother. The rocks will certainly not tremble should I show them just how unimpressed I am by their antics.

Just take a deep breath, Kei.

Everything will be fine.

Please.

For a moment I concentrate on breathing. Air caresses my lips, slips past them. It tickles my tongue. With my eyes closed, I follow it down my airway, and let the breath curl and swell in my lungs, expanding them, pushing outwards as far as my body will allow. Then I hold until it almost hurts. Gently, every so gently, I guide the breath outwards again, until it leaves my mouth in what would almost feel like a kiss were it not too soft and too fleeting. My breath dissolves into thin air.

I do not need to breathe, of course. I am not alive, after all, and the lack of rotting is more or less the only thing that sets me apart from the corpses that need to be buried.

Speaking of which.

I try to remain perfectly calm as I let my gaze wander. The trip is disappointingly short. There is solid rock in front, above and below me. I reach out to touch the wall of my tiny little grave and find that there's not even an arm's length between the rock and me. It's rough to the touch, not smooth. Seems that when the hideout collapsed, it took part of the surrounding landmass with it. Inwards. Towards me. On top of me. Great.

I can feel a smooth wall against my back. Might have been part of the floor; the walls were made to look and feel rougher, an imitation of natural caves that just failed to convince. The guys we have been trying to rob must have had a sense for the dramatic. Hence all the explosives scattered across the place.

Really, not even I as a vampire would ever dream of living in a place that goes nine stories downwards beneath the surface. Especially not when that place is full of explosives. And even less when there's a lunatic in there who has failed to eat the drugged pizza and in a moment of utter confusion and panic decides that a detonation would be just what the place needs.

As soon as I get out of here, I will give Toshi a proper trashing for dragging this job out of the murky waters it lurked in.

Toshi. Sho. Son.

No.

Please.

Nononononononono.

Pain explodes in my head and I remember that sudden movements are not an option when there is solid rock inches above your head. Someone whimpers – I reckon it must be me, but it sounds too frightened and weak to be me, really – and I bring my hands up to my face.

They probably haven't made it. Even I have not been able to escape this death trap, and I am the vampire. Speed and strength far surpassing that of the humans, I should have been able to make it. I should have been able to save them. I should have protected them.

There is no way they made it out in time.

They are dead. They have to be dead. The real kind of death, the one that rips you out of the living world, leaving nothing behind but a hole where there should have been someone.

It is my fault.

Once again I live while everyone else dies.

I am a monster. A murderer. The blood of my friends, my family is on my hands. Blue eyes will never sparkle again. Laughter will never reach my ears again. They will never drag me along to beaches again, never force me to eat human food again, never... they will never see the sun again. Just like me. And I'm still here. I'm all that's left. Me – and Yi-Che – and Shinji. And I will not even be able to tell them. My breath catches in my throat.

No.

Please, no.

This is why I need to try not to think.

Not to feel.

It hurts.

Dead. Forever gone. Holes where there used to be somone.

They have been trapped in here, just like me, and just like my body was shattered beyond repair so were theirs. Only they could not have survived that.

Come back.

Please.

My hands shake badly as I reach out, touching solid rock once more. I push with all my remaining strength. I can't give up. Not yet. I need to dig myself out, somehow, I need to find them, I need to bring them home, I need to tell Yi-Che, I need to tell Shinji, I need, I need, I need, I want, I beg, I plead, I scream and no one answers.

Sho. Toshi. Son.

Where are you?

Please.

Come back to me. Help me. I am not done protecting you. I am not done watching you grow and live and move away from me. I am not done being close to you. I am not done loving all of you, children as you are, annoying as you are, wonderful as your are. I am not done being the odd one out in this strange group of friends. I am not done.

And yet...

I am.

My fingers scratch across stone. I can feel my fingernails tearing and ripping as I try to claw something loose. I can smell dead blood welling up where I scrape the skin of my fingers. I twist in my tiny grave, I kick, I lash out, I trash.

Please.

Let me out.

I need to look for them.

I need to make sure they find peace.

Please.

PLEASE!

I do not feel anything anymore. I do not want to. Both the human and the monster inside of me scream for the blissfull oblivion I floated in when my body was too weak to hold onto the remains of my immortal soul. I want to go back, just so that I will not imagine the horrible, painful deaths my friends have faced. I want to save them. I want to join them.

I don't know how much time has passed. The next thing I am really aware of is staring at my hands. Broken fingers, white bone, torn flesh. The blood is grey in the darkness of my tomb. The scent is sickening.

„Please don't", I whisper, but the wounds heal anyway. I have twisted myself halfway around, facing what I will call a ceiling for lack of proper words. More like the stone slab on an old-fashioned sarcophagus. There are bloody handprints above me. Mine.

When someone digs this place up they will find the skeletons of my friends. They will throw them away or sell them or make medicine out of them that does not work. They will also find me. And when someone comes looking for them after that they will find their bloodless, mutilated bodies, because I will be too hungry by then to hold myself back, and bloody handprints everywhere.

When someone digs me up.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

No one will dig us up. Neither me nor the remains of my friends, rotting away somewhere. Sho probably close enough that I will notice the smell sooner or later. I do not know where Toshi and Son where when the celing above me collapsed, broke too many bones inside of me and took me and the floor down, ever downwards. Sho... I believe he was close to the stairway on the far end of the room. We only had two stories left above us. Two stories. I think I saw the idiot moving back towards me when I was broken and dragged under. Idiot.

My idiot.

That burning and stinging in my eyes...

It's only dust and dirt and I wipe it away quickly.

No one will dig any of us up.

In Mallepa, whenever a building collapses (and buildings tend to do that around here because these days people have other problems than those of architectural nature) the people just leave it that way and build other things on top.

They will build houses on top of my friends' graves.

They will build houses on top of me.

Please don't.

Please let this be a nightmare.

Please let me out.

Please tell me my friends made it at least. Someone. Anyone.

Someone sobs.

But it can't be me.

I don't cry.

The rational part of my mind tells me I'm still trying to deny the situation. I'm still trying to find ways not to ponder the concept of spending eternity in here. Thinking about my dead friends, trashing, hurting myself, trying to remember how I managed to end up here, crying.

As I open my eyes they are dry.

There. Not stalling anymore. I can face this. I am not in denial.

I am not.

Just...

Let me scream.

Let me weep for my friends.

Let somebody hear me.

Please...

~*~

* * *

_TBC.._.


	3. Chapter 02: Dreams

**Title:** And Yet I Scream  
**Author: **Inkcharm  
**Summary:** No one will be able to hear me. And yet I scream...  
**Warnings:** dark, angst, self-mutilation  
**Disclaimer:** The movie "Moon Child" does not belong to me, nor do its characters or anything related to it. I make no profit out of this story, it is written merely for fun and entertainment of other fans.  
**Part:** 3/6

* * *

**And Yet I Scream**

_Chapter 02: Dreams_

It is a well known fact that the human body has some sort of inner clock. Wenn it grows dark outside, your body will tell you it is time to go to bed. In summer, when the days are longer, you will probably not feel as tired as in winter, when it gets dark so much earlier. Vampires are the same, only reversed, of course. The reason I sleep during the day and am awake at nighttime is not just my vulnerability towards sunlight. When the sun rises, I simply grow tired.

There is no sunrise in my tomb far beneath the earth.

I have no way to judge the passing of time. Yes, occasionally I will feel fatigue creeping into my body, dragging me into uncomfortable sleep, my whole figure twisted and cramped due to the tiny room that I have left in between solid stone. But I know I can't rely on my body to know the difference between day and night when I am surrounded by eternal darkness. My senses keep trying to convince me that since it's dark I ought to stay awake.

The natural cycle of sleeping and waking is disrupted down here, and I have no way of judging the passage of time. How long have I been here?

Hours? Days?

It could be weeks for all I know. I don't know how long I sleep, when exhaustion claims me, for without feeding and trapped beneath the earth sleep brings no rest for me.

Sleep only brings nightmares, jumbled images and feelings.

When I close my eyes, I see the dead eyes of all victims, hear their desperate sobs and feel their blood running down my tongue, carrying their hopes and wishes and turning them ashen in my mouth. I see Luka die. I watch Sho, I watch Yi-Che and endure the horrible pain of feeling the loss that is bound to happen, destined to happen, because I am a vampire and no matter who holds my heart, they will not make it beat. It will always be a dead weight in my chest, a place of darkness and regret; the graveyards for my feelings. I feel a pillar of stone collapsing on top of me, snapping my spine and pinning me onto the collapsing floor. Sometimes I hear Sho screaming something that sounds like my name. Always, though, I am conscious of dreaming. Trapped in my own body I see my own past actions unfold, unable to change the events no matter how much I long for it.

The nightmarish visions of killing and death, slaughter and fading life envelope me like silk at first, soft fabric on my naked skin, black on white. However, the silk changes with each face flashing before my eyes, with each life I take although I am begging with myself to stop, with each last human breath ghosting over my cheek and each last drop of blood burning down my throat like acid. The silk changes and becomes a wire, and the wire cuts deep. I stare down at my body and I want to scream, but I can't because this is not real and my nightmares trap me inside myself just as I am trapped beneath the earth. I see my flesh being cut open by the wire. Blood so dark it seems black seeps from the wounds, cold and thick and dead, and stains my pale limbs. I can see the wires cutting ever deeper, I can feel them tightening, forcing themselves deeper into my body, under my skin and towards my bones. And as my wounds close, the wire cuts deeper, becoming a part of myself. I can feel it moving through me, cutting and hurting, too much and never enough, painful and yet too soft, punishment dealt without the visciousness I would inflict upon myself given the chance. I am being torn apart from the inside, and yet I stand in perfect silence. My suffering takes place on the inside and no one who looks my way would know my pain, for this is how it should be. My eyes are wide and my mouth is open, yet I cannot scream, and that is possibly the worst part of this dream.

In my dream, I know that I should stay with Luka. Burn by his side, ending the life that should have ended ages ago when I fell and broke and he could not let me go. In my dream, I always try to make my legs move, but they never carry me towards him. As I stand in the shadows and watch him burn, I fight for control over the events unfolding. I wish to joing him, to move, to call out to him once more, to join in his song and his sorrow and his death. But nothing happens, I just stand in place as long as the ever approaching dawn will allow me to, and then I turn and run, loathing my cowardice and screaming my throat raw with loss and regret.

In my dream I fight to open my mouth, to interrupt Sho and Yi-Che as she tends to his wounds. I yearn to run my tongue over the blood oozing from his wound, I yearn to feel her hands on my cold skin, I yearn for a human's touch to warm me and ease my suffering for only a short while, to ease it in a less gruesome way than feeding. I want to ask them to look at me, I want to ask them to turn their backs on me. I can't stand the thought that they might find happiness with each other. I want to tear them apart, I want them to sort out my conflicting feelings for me that I try to bury, but I know that each time I have dug a fresh grave for an emotion, thinking of them will ruin all my efforts and I'll have to start anew. I yearn for the day when Sho confessed he had not yet been kissed, I long to respond to his unspoken question differently than I did. I yearn for the moment on the beach when we took a photograph, I long not to tell Yi-Che to smile but to ask her to smile for me. I want them to know that I am always wondering if Sho's kiss or Yi-Che's smile for me could have made me remember what it is like to fall in love with someone. But as I witness these scenes I cannot change the actions and words I regret to this day. They will never know. Knowing I have missed all my chances is worse than the wire cutting ever deeper. The part of me that is still able to hope Sho made it weeps at the thought that with me out of the picture they will probably find happiness with each other.

Whenever my dreams turn toward the latest job gone horribly wrong I can't help but rage inside myself as I see the mistakes so clearly. I am not strong enough for a big job for lack of feeding. The job feels wrong, too unusual and too risky. I want to punch Toshi for suggesting it to Sho, who always gets too excited by danger. I want to tell Sho to take care of himself as I usually do, but this time I am too preoccupied with not thinking about the way his heartbeats quickens when we enter the building. The worst part, though, is that when my spine is snapped and my body is crushed I am not able to look up. I need to raise my head, I need to see Sho, see him run for the stairs. The worst part is not knowing, not seeing what he does when the floor gives way.

Each time I wake up there are tears on my cheeks and the dead muscle that is my heart clenches too tightly, too painfully, grows too heavy in my chest. The pressure is too much, but it does not lessen. My heart cannot shatter as long as the wire is wrapped around it so tightly, so painfully. There will be no relief for me, the pain is eternal and with each passing moment I burden myself with more.

And so I try to force myself to stay awake, fully aware how futile the attempt is. Sooner or later I will not be able to fight my own body anymore, no matter what I do.

I have taken it upon myself to make myself as familiar as possible with my surroundings. After all, if I am to spend eternity in here, I might as well be fully aware of my casket, my prison, my hell. It gives me something to do. It keeps my mind away from my dreams and my memories and my fears and my panic.

It keeps me from thinking about the vast eternity stretching ahead of me.

The space I occupy is tiny, to say the least. I can't raise my head more than a few inches before my forehead touches rough stone. Turning around is painful, for I have to twist myself around between the stone above and underneath me forcefully. I don't care about the skin tearing from my shoulders in the process. The wounds will heal, after all.

When I press my back against one wall I am unable to stretch out my arms completely before my palm touches the other wall. At the same time, my legs are always bent at an uncomfortable angle, because although I am small, my tomb is not long enough for me.

My eyes, adjusted to the darkness as they are, have scanned the tiny space to its full extent, including the torn and shredded clothing clinging to the poor bastard trapped in here. Judging from the lack of company, I believe it safe to guess that the poor bastard is me, indeed.

My fingers have found every tiny crack in the stones, every bump in the texture, every irregularity and every jagged edge. I have learned the hard way that the remains of a metal bar are sticking from the rubble around me, nearly impaling myself on it one night. Or day. Or whatever.

Time is a funny thing. I cannot being to say how often I have pictured my boys – and now boys and one girl – growing up, imagining how they would look like as they aged. I envy those able to age. I will always be trapped in this body. In the beginning I found it amusing to tell people I was fourty, amused by the disbelief written all over their faces. No one turns fourty and looks as youthful as I do, after all. But I did not only that. I also turned fifty and decided to stop counting when sixty was looming close to the horizon. Counting the years when you know you'll count for an eternity becomes quite depressing.

I seem to loose focus of my train of thought more and more often down here.

I used to imagine how they would age, trying to foresee the subtle changes in their faces and bodies. Whose hair would fall out first, who'd sport the first wrinkles, whose teeth would fall out first. I have always treasured the image of them together in old age, still laughing together, still bantering.

Would I be with them? When would Toshi, Son and Yi-Che finally catch up with what Sho and Shinji had known all along? How would they react? Would I be the ever youthful one, older than all of them on the inside, yet young enough to be their grandchild on the outside, or would I be the bad memory they'd share? Remember that monster Sho befriended once? The one who would never age. Or would I sit with them, suffering from being called „boy" and „little one" but laughing along nonetheless because I loved them and they loved me.

I believe I prefer the picture that does not include me, simply because somehow it would seem more pure, more real, less tainted. I have always been so scared of watching my friends aging and dying. Now I find myself wishing for the chance to see my family grow old. Even if I could just watch from afar, it would be enough.

How long will it take me to forget their faces? It will happen.

I remember all my victims' faces with shocking clarity. I could tell tales of the stories written in their eyes as I drained their lives. If I ever chose to share the memories I could describe their taste and scent and sound in vivid details. Once I tried to capture them in a sketchbook. But it filled far too quickly for my liking and I grew more and more disgusted with myself. After all, who am I to draw them and keep them with me like that, making them trophies, making each of them a face among many for the world to see. No, it is better to let them stay in my mind and memory, tormenting me and haunting my dreams as it should be.

What makes me feel all the more guilty is the fact that I cannot quite remember the faces of the family and friends I used to have. Whenever I look into a mirror I find myself wondering which parent I used to take after. I never remember. The sound of their voices, the smell of their skin, the details of their faces; the have vanished from my memory over the decades. Sometimes I dream of them, but they always remain lifeless and blank. Other times I believe to recall that I used to be closer to my mother. Then again, maybe that is just wishful thinking, holding onto a fragment that is possibly not even a real memory just so that I can tell myself that I have not forgotten everything.

I don't ever want to dream again.

It's inevitable, though. I can feel exhaustion pulling on me, like chains attached to my mind in an attempt to drag me under. Sleep and think, that's all I can do down here, and I hate it.

Groaning, I roll over again. I wince and hiss softly, as my shoulder is violently dragged across rough stone. With a groan I press my face into the hard ground beneath me as the wound starts healing. It takes longer each time, because I can't feed anymore.

I wonder what will happen. I will never be able to feed again, not even if I want to. The craving cannot be satisfied down here. I am going to starve and I'm going to do it eternally. My only hope is that the beast will grow hungry enough to crush my consciousness and allow me to escape to a state of blissfull nothingness. Then again, hopes are foolish in themselves. Hopes creat expectations and expectations lead to disappointments.

There's no use in hoping that I'll never dream again.

There's no use in hoping that I'll ever escape.

There's no use in hoping that Sho did the impossible and made it out alive.

The silence is too heavy to bear. My tiny space is filled with too much silence where there used to be laughter and banter and joking, heated arguments and delightfully pointless conversation. I lick my lips, and open my eyes – when did they close? I don't want to close my eyes. I don't want to dream. I don't want to.

Slowly, I take a breath.

Then I scream.

As loud as I can. As long as I can.

The sound pierces the heavy silence, rips through it and fills my surroundings. The scream sounds unfamiliar to my sensitive ears and I dimly wonder how long I have gone without making a sound for my own screams to seem so wrong.

When I cut off my own scream to catch my breath again, chest heaving, I realize that I made the silence worse. Where there was a scream that hurt all the way from my heart up my throat and into my ears, now there is that silence again.

I don't want eternal silence. Silence just makes me realize how tired I am. I can't go to sleep. I don't want to.

So I scream again. And again. And again until my ears are ringing and my throat hurts. Still there is a sound. I realize that it's chocked sobbing. I realize it's coming from me.

„Don't cry, little vampire. Go to sleep. I will watch over your dreams."

I freeze. My sobs stop suddenly, I hold my breath and stare into the darkness with wide eyes.

Who...?

It's not possible. I'm alone.

Am I not?

„Go to sleep. I'm here."

Am I dreaming? Have I fallen asleep without noticing and this is a dream?

Please let this be a dream.

Because if this is not a dream, if this is a real voice I am hearing...

… then I'm afraid I have begun to lose my mind.

Let this be a dream.

„Go to sleep."

* * *

_TBC..._


End file.
